In June 2002, the first ever big delegation led by Dr AC Muthiah, the Senior Vice President of FICCI, left for the United States. The two interesting features of this meticulously planned visit by Dr Amit Mitra, the Secretary General of FICCI were first, the unusual difficulty experienced in political clearance owing to the ongoing India-Pakistan stand off. Second, in the US it was not the expected Information Technology (IT) sector that received attention, but the Biotechnological (BT) Companies like Ranbaxy, Biocon India, and Cadila among others, who stole the limelight.
Dengue: A Germ with Weapon Potential
In May 2002, the then US Undersecretary of State for Arms Control, John Bolton, in his speech at the Heritage Foundation had accused Cuba of having a limited offensive biological warfare programme. But a cursory examination of history shows that the Cubans were in fact 'victims' of American 'germ' attacks in the past.